The Paul Lambert thread - poll reset after our capitulation to Hull

[Monty]

Of course they can't ignore them completely, but players should have a coherent set of tactics and a bit of mental strength in order to carry out those tactics, and those should help them resist the crowd. Our players have a certain amount of the latter but very little of the former, and that's not their fault.

[Chris Smith]

Lambert should be given the opportunity to see through a plan. It may or may not succeed but what you can bet the house on is that if we change managers again the new bloke will have different ideas, want different players and we'll be starting the whole process from scratch again. After the shambles of recent years, that is the last thing the club needs.

I know you have a fear of change, Chris, going back to DOL but change can be a good thing, it's about the continuity of the plan not starting it from scratch. Hopefully the new bloke will have new ideas, at least as far as the football be play but will be able to develop the players to reaching their potential through intelligent training and tactics rather than relying purely on hard work. We gave MON all the goodwill, time and money and he achieved the square root of fuck all in footballing terms. It was no surprise that his squad collapsed under Houllier as most of them had the football skills trained out of them.

If you argued that you had little faith in Lerner/Faulkner finding the right replacement, I could see your point but to defend keeping Lambert because you're scared of change and maybe given time, he might get it right, something even you don't seem convinced with, is a very poor excuse for keeping him. We've got some relatively easy games, especially at home between now and the end of the season. Let's hope he proves he's worth his existing contract, never mind a new one.

I'm not scared of change but even someone as myopic as you must have noticed that we have had a lot of it lately and it's caused us nothing but grief.

So, we get rid of Lambert then in another 12 months if it is not all sweetness and light you'll all come up with the brilliant original though that we need a new manager.

Lambert had a decent track record before he joined us, he appears well regarded within the game so it's not like we are talking about a complete no hoper. So you either take the view that he's worth persevering with on the basis that he's done the dirty work and the foundations are in place, or you ditch it all to go back to square one because that's always worked so well in the past.

[Monty]

Fair enough Chris. I think I might be one of the very few people on here whose opinion of Lambert is actually higher than it was at the time of his joining. I thought he was just a crude boofmerchant with a decent lower league record and one decent top flight season, which didn't feel too different to what had gone before. I now think that he is very good in the transfer market and that he has designs on playing good football, but that he shows cripplingly few signs of knowing how to achieve this. Sticking with him for too long will only compound the error.

[eastie]

Any contract talks should be put on hold until at least the summer until we see how the season has panned out.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Lambert should be given the opportunity to see through a plan. It may or may not succeed but what you can bet the house on is that if we change managers again the new bloke will have different ideas, want different players and we'll be starting the whole process from scratch again. After the shambles of recent years, that is the last thing the club needs.

I know you have a fear of change, Chris, going back to DOL but change can be a good thing, it's about the continuity of the plan not starting it from scratch. Hopefully the new bloke will have new ideas, at least as far as the football be play but will be able to develop the players to reaching their potential through intelligent training and tactics rather than relying purely on hard work. We gave MON all the goodwill, time and money and he achieved the square root of fuck all in footballing terms. It was no surprise that his squad collapsed under Houllier as most of them had the football skills trained out of them.

If you argued that you had little faith in Lerner/Faulkner finding the right replacement, I could see your point but to defend keeping Lambert because you're scared of change and maybe given time, he might get it right, something even you don't seem convinced with, is a very poor excuse for keeping him. We've got some relatively easy games, especially at home between now and the end of the season. Let's hope he proves he's worth his existing contract, never mind a new one.

I'm not scared of change but even someone as myopic as you must have noticed that we have had a lot of it lately and it's caused us nothing but grief.

I'm far from myopic to realise it's a risk based on recent history but just because we've got it wrong previously, it doesn't mean we'll forever get it wrong. What's wrong is accepting the dullness that is becoming Aston Villa. The question is, is change worth the risk or do we wait another season and hear the same poor, weak ass excuses being brought out? "Oh, we have to break the 3 year cycle" and such nonsense.

The main reason we've struggled over the last few seasons is the board making poor managerial appointments and a trimming of the wage bill. Now we have the wage bill under control.

So, we get rid of Lambert then in another 12 months if it is not all sweetness and light you'll all come up with the brilliant original though that we need a new manager.

Ha! If the board were to appoint another McCleish there would be reason to look elsewhere but any manager that shows signs of actually building something positive, as Lambert did last year, despite a poor season, deserves another go. But when there are next to no signs the manager knows what he is doing, when the football is so poor, when loyal season ticket holders say they're not going to bother renewing, you have to have an open mind and if necessary cut your loses.

Lambert had a decent track record before he joined us, he appears well regarded within the game so it's not like we are talking about a complete no hoper. So you either take the view that he's worth persevering with on the basis that he's done the dirty work and the foundations are in place, or you ditch it all to go back to square one because that's always worked so well in the past.

You still don't get it and you call me myopic. It doesn't have to go back to scratch. Honestly, Chris, it doesn't. A new man could and probably would be told to work with what he's got and given only a few quid for transfers. The idea is that the new man could get better performances and develop the players he has. If you think Lambert is doing that, then fine, that's your opinion but to pretend that everything will be "sweetness and light" if we give him more time based on what we've seen to date is delusional.

[saunders_heroes]

How did the news of his new contract leak out of the club a anyway, did they really think it would cheer the fans up if we heard news of an extended deal for a manager with a woeful record like Lambert's?

[Chris Smith]

Rudy, any new manager worth having will want his own players, those that don't will be those just grateful for the job. It's how it always works.

What surprises me most about this is how so many people who don't appear to be totally stupid <;¬)> have, in such a relatively short time, been able to form such an unbending opinion on Lambert. To me I've seem bits of everything, from the rubbish to the exhilarating, but that is just what I would expect from a team having gone through all the upheaval that we have in recent years.

Next season will be the key one for him.

[Toronto Villa]

Rudy, any new manager worth having will want his own players, those that don't will be those just grateful for the job. It's how it always works.

What surprises me most about this is how so many people who don't appear to be totally stupid <;¬)> have, in such a relatively short time, been able to form such an unbending opinion on Lambert. To me I've seem bits of everything, from the rubbish to the exhilarating, but that is just what I would expect from a team having gone through all the upheaval that we have in recent years.

Next season will be the key one for him.

Count me in on this position. What we have seen is to a degree what was expected. The unfortunate side is some of the junk we have had to witness as part of the journey. But unless we were willing to free transfer the unwanted and net spend £100m in one year this was never going turnaround quickly. It was always going to be a case of doing things bit by bit, and get to a point of acceleration in year 3 or 4. We've all been through the emotional ringer so I can certainly accept, even if I don't agree on some of the more extreme viewpoints. What I will say is that I have almost no interest in seeing us start down the same path again. I have no fear of relegation even though things are not exactly rosy right at this minute. But we'll get to the summer and will really get a true impression of the direction and desire of the club.

[PeterWithesShin]

If we are in the same position in a years time, and having the same conversations then my patience with Lambert will all but vanish. That said i'm torn on the new contract thing. He doesn't really deserve one, at the same time if by some chance we do click and have a blinding season and we haven't extended it then he can just walk away to someone else.

We also only see the on the pitch results, which are all that really matter to us, but we have no real idea of the behind the scenes stuff. Maybe that and the long term 'plan' means Lambert does deserve the contract.

[saunders_heroes]

If we are in the same position in a years time, and having the same conversations then my patience with Lambert will all but vanish. That said i'm torn on the new contract thing. He doesn't really deserve one, at the same time if by some chance we do click and have a blinding season and we haven't extended it then he can just walk away to someone else.

We also only see the on the pitch results, which are all that really matter to us, but we have no real idea of the behind the scenes stuff. Maybe that and the long term 'plan' means Lambert does deserve the contract.

If we're in this same position this time next year and then he gets the sack fans will look at it as another year wasted. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and make a decision.
Either way, he certainly doesn't deserve a contract extension, unless Lerner's only ambition for Villa is to stay in the Premier League.

[PeterWithesShin]

And if we sack him and he goes on to be a top manager then it will be a wasted opportunity. It works both ways.

We can guess all we want, but ultimately none of us has a clue what the long term vision for Villa is, either Lambert's or Randy's.

[Monty]

I have a guess as to Lambert's long-term plans. I just think we've seen 18 months of it and that, far from looking closer to implementing it, it looks like it's slipping further away. People talk about patience being needed for managers and that's true, but actually a manager's style of play can often be seen working, or in evidence, very quickly. Look at Poyet, or indeed ourselves in Lambert's first game ('we're Aston Villa, we're passing the ball' etc), when his intentions contrasted very obviously with McLeish's. However, a season and a half is starting to show the limits of his reliance on good intentions.

[saunders_heroes]

And if we sack him and he goes on to be a top manager then it will be a wasted opportunity. It works both ways.

We can guess all we want, but ultimately none of us has a clue what the long term vision for Villa is, either Lambert's or Randy's.

But I don't see any evidence that he'll go on to become a great manager. If someone could point to what he's actually achieved as a manager and why he's bound for greatness I'm all ears.

[LeeB]

And if we sack him and he goes on to be a top manager then it will be a wasted opportunity. It works both ways.

We can guess all we want, but ultimately none of us has a clue what the long term vision for Villa is, either Lambert's or Randy's.

But I don't see any evidence that he'll go on to become a great manager. If someone could point to what he's actually achieved as a manager and why he's bound for greatness I'm all ears.

What he did at Norwich was pretty impressive, regardless of how you see his time here.

[saunders_heroes]

And if we sack him and he goes on to be a top manager then it will be a wasted opportunity. It works both ways.

We can guess all we want, but ultimately none of us has a clue what the long term vision for Villa is, either Lambert's or Randy's.

But I don't see any evidence that he'll go on to become a great manager. If someone could point to what he's actually achieved as a manager and why he's bound for greatness I'm all ears.

What he did at Norwich was pretty impressive, regardless of how you see his time here.

But league history is littered with managers who take their lower league teams up to the PL and keep them there for a year or two. Then most of them vanish back to the lower leagues, even most of the ones who are lauded as the next big thing.